Conventional consumer-use wagons are commonly used for holding and carrying cargo such as children, their toys, beach items (e.g., chairs, towels, and sand buckets/shovels), and sports equipment (e.g., balls, bats, and helmets). Such wagons typically include a generally rectangular base and four generally rectangular upright walls forming an open-topped container, with a pull handle pivotally coupled to the base front, and with four wheels rotationally mounted to the base bottom. A traditional and well-known wagon of this type is the classic RADIO FLYER wagon.
While these wagons have their advantages, they also have some drawbacks. For example, they tend to be bulky and occupy valuable storage space in the garage as well as in a parent's car or minivan. Efforts to address this drawback have produced some collapsible wagons designs. But these wagons have not proven sufficiently satisfactory, for example many have finger-pinch areas where fingers can get pinched during collapsing, many have collapsing mechanisms that are not as quick and easy to use as is desired, and many are not as structurally robust as is desired.
Accordingly, it can be seen that needs exist for improved features for collapsing wagons into a compact arrangement for storage and transport and for securing collapsible walls of wagons in their upright position for use. It is to the provision of solutions to these and other problems that the present invention is primarily directed.